Board Game Arena

tbhp wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 17:00

Ceaseless wrote: ↑30 June 2026, 16:25 Karma is easy to gain back just by playing games, you don't have to do a speedrun to do it. You get a full 1% just for completing a game regularly. That's like getting karma for breathing, it's nothing. There's no need to increase easily gained karma.

If a person normally plays games that typically last half an hour in real time, they'll be tempted to play shorter games that they normally wouldn't play just to gain their karma back. This is good neither for the player who isn't enjoying themselves nor for their opponent who is essentially facing a zombie.

Have they considered playing normally instead? Would solve all of their issues.

tbhp wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 17:00 Completing games has less value as a punishment

??? This is BGA, a site for playing games. What are you on about with this "completing games as a punishment"?

Ceaseless wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:32 ??? This is BGA, a site for playing games. What are you on about with this "completing games as a punishment"?

Completing games is how you gain back karma on this site, so that's the punishment if you lost karma and want to gain it back.

I'm pointing out that punishments need to have meaning to be effective, and going by sheer number of games might not be the most meaningful metric.

tbhp wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:39

Ceaseless wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:32 ??? This is BGA, a site for playing games. What are you on about with this "completing games as a punishment"?

Completing games is how you gain back karma on this site, so that's the punishment if you lost karma and want to gain it back.

I'm pointing out that punishments need to have meaning to be effective, and going by sheer number of games might not be the most meaningful metric.

I thought the "punishment" was the restriction from joining tables that are filtered by karma.

Suoivax wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:59

tbhp wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:39

Ceaseless wrote: ↑01 July 2026, 20:32 ??? This is BGA, a site for playing games. What are you on about with this "completing games as a punishment"?

Completing games is how you gain back karma on this site, so that's the punishment if you lost karma and want to gain it back.

I'm pointing out that punishments need to have meaning to be effective, and going by sheer number of games might not be the most meaningful metric.

I thought the "punishment" was the restriction from joining tables that are filtered by karma.

It's obviously both. Punishment can be understood as "the thing you are prohibited from doing when you are punished" and "the thing you have to do in order to stop being punished".

It's not punishment that you have to complete games. They're trying to influence socially acceptable behaviour (of finishing your games). You get fined for not wearing a seatbelt in your car (in most countries, including mine), but I don't think anyone would argue that wearing your seatbelt is a punishment. As someone else said, if someone think completing games normally (rather than quitting in the middle or timing out) is a punishment, then they really shouldn't be playing games with anyone. Or I guess stick to friendly, if timing out is your issue? But there's usually no excuse for quitting in the middle without explanation. And in the odd case where it is valid, well, karma penalties are earned back pretty quickly, especially if you're only down 10-20, even 30 points.

More like: you might get a fine for speeding and that deprives you of some of your money. The most common way to earn money is through a job, so therefore your job is your punishment for speeding.

In other words, just because a punishment involves depriving you of something, and there is a way to recover it, doesn’t mean that the recovery is the punishment.

nik592 wrote: ↑02 July 2026, 02:34 It's not punishment that you have to complete games. They're trying to influence socially acceptable behaviour (of finishing your games). You get fined for not wearing a seatbelt in your car (in most countries, including mine), but I don't think anyone would argue that wearing your seatbelt is a punishment. As someone else said, if someone think completing games normally (rather than quitting in the middle or timing out) is a punishment, then they really shouldn't be playing games with anyone. Or I guess stick to friendly, if timing out is your issue? But there's usually no excuse for quitting in the middle without explanation. And in the odd case where it is valid, well, karma penalties are earned back pretty quickly, especially if you're only down 10-20, even 30 points.

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I'm only calling it the punishment because that's literally the process you have to go through in order to be rehabilitated.

In the real word, the punishment usually doesn't involve having to do the thing you failed to do, because we prefer to just people in jail. But you could imagine a society where, upon committing a crime, a person is being followed around during a certain time by someone who checks if they are behaving correctly. That's kind of the idea when people are given restricted freedom and a bracelet that detects their every move (I'm not sure how it's called in English).

Like Ceaseless and I said, karma seems to be regained back too easily, and I think it would be better if the process to gain it back was something that had more of a meaningful impact on the wrongdoer (in this case sometimes it does, but not when a person just mindlessly grinds a game they normally wouldn't be playing). So OP and I suggested the idea of using time played rather than number of games played to remedy to that.